We threw a party this year for New Year’s Eve. As far as I am concerned a New Year’s Eve party is successful if it is easy for me to stay up until midnight. Lucky for us, our guests came in waves all night, bringing fresh energy and assorted fresh goodies with them.

We had asked guests to bring a finger food of some sort, and many marvelous homemade concoctions showed up: a beautiful country pate with cornichons, a bushel of pristine Bluepoint oysters, paddlefish caviar from Montana, a fabulous potato torta, homemade spinach pies and little soft sandwiches with proscuitto and baby spinach, boiled fingerling potatoes served with homemade aioli, cheese and breads and sausages, endive filled with all sorts of savory things, creamy gravlox on cucumber rounds, buttery anchovies on crostini spread with fatty Icelandic butter, a number of delicious homemade pizzas, a tray of sweet stuffed eggs, a rather unbelievable kugelhopf cake with associated table décor, cases of Gruet sparkling wine, constant martinis—though I serve them in 2-ounce glasses: they’re tiny—crunchy macaroons, including the potentially lethal Tonka Bean macaroon, a beautiful tin of Christmas cookies, and a platter of rich, black chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing. Even though I hired a housekeeper to help, the place was trashed. I was finding champagne glasses under chairs and oyster shells on the bookshelves for two days. Unsurprisingly, New Year’s day was slow. Very slow.

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New Year's Day

We ate a restorative pho broth with pieces of the potato torta in it, which actually has a precedent in all sorts of cuisines. In Italy, a popular dish is chicken stock with crespini, a delicate crepe flavored with Parmesan cheese and parsley. We had it on Christmas Day.

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Chicken stock with crespini

Anyway, the thing I really wanted was a ginger ale, but nobody in the house was willing to get dressed and go to the store. That’s when it occurred to me that having some ginger syrup on hand would have been a very good idea (we had lots of leftover soda water from the party).

Ginger syrup is very easy to make, with two caveats. There is no USDA data that I could find with processing times. While some people think ginger syrup can be processed like a berry syrup, I don’t think so. Ginger has a pH of 5.6 to 5.9, above the safe limit for water bath processing without added acid. Sugar is a preservative, but not in the same way acid preserves. Sugar preserves like salt does, by dehydrating the food and in so doing, creating a hostile environment for spoilers. Syrup is, by its very nature, wet. It seems ginger syrup would likely have to be pressure canned. The problem with that idea is the syrup is rather fragile: After a few days in the fridge ginger syrup loses its oomph. (The pungent gingerole compounds degrade into milder flavored compounds over time.) I think pressure canning may decimate the flavor, though I haven’t tried it yet as I still need to figure out a safe processing time. So Caveat #1 is, you have to refrigerate the syrup. Caveat #2 is, if allowed to boil too long,

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Don't let your syrup boil hard.

And allow the syrup to get too thick,

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This syrup is too heavy.

The syrup will crystallize when cool.

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This syrup wants to be rock candy.

You will find yourself scraping away at the candy in the bottom of your jar to get a spoonful of the stuff, although it still dissolves in soda and tastes great. But it’s best to just watch the syrup and make sure you don’t overcook it.

I added a small red hot pepper and some lemon rind to amp up the flavor, and I like it very much, though their inclusion is totally optional. To serve the ginger ale, I combine about 2 teaspoons per half cup of soda water and stir, and then pour over ice.

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Homemade ginger ale

It is totally fresh, easy, delicious. Of course, you can always go the next step and make fermented ginger ale. But being a rather low-tech sort, I like the simplicity of having the syrup on hand.

With the leftover ginger slices, I made crystallized ginger, which is not necessarily something I eat very much of, but I have a few ideas which may be fodder for a future post.

Until then, Happy New Year!

Ginger Syrup
Makes 1 ½ cups syrup
When buying ginger look for a smooth, hard rhizome with a pungent smell. Wrinkled, scabby ginger rhizomes will be fibrous and have a faded taste.

Place all the ingredients in a heavy-bottomed pot and bring to a boil over a medium high heat.

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Cut the ginger into thin discs if you want to make crystallized ginger later.

Lower the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. At this point I removed the red pepper—you don’t have to. Continue cooking for another 30 minutes, until the syrup is reduced by 50%. Allow to cool enough to handle. Strain (reserve the ginger pieces) and pour into sterilized jars. One and a half cups of syrup will fit nicely into 3 half pint jars, or an 8.5 ounce bottle. (To sterilize, boil the jars in water for 10 minutes at sea level, adding 1 minute for every 1,000 feet above sea level.)

The syrup holds in the fridge for a week, although the flavor may begin to fade even earlier.

Crystallized Ginger
Makes ½ pint ginger pieces

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Crystallized ginger

In a bowl combine the strained ginger pieces and a cup of granulated sugar. Toss well. Pour the sugar and ginger pieces onto a cookie sheet and place in a dry spot in the house. I put mine on the radiator overnight.

You may need to press some sugar into pieces of ginger that seem juicy. This usually happens with the thicker discs of ginger. After about 12 hours the ginger should feel dry and rubbery.

Eugenia Bone, a veteran food writer who has published in many national magazines and newspapers, is also a cookbook author. She is the author of Well-Preserved (Clarkson Potter 2009). She has contributed to many cookbooks and a few literary journals, been nominated for a variety of food writing awards and participated in radio, interactive and online interviews, in addition to appearing multiple times on television. She lives in New York City and Crawford, Colo.

The secret to tasty food is homemade and seasonal. To do that, you've got to put up food. Well-Preserved reports on small batch preservation year round, and generates recipes from those preserved foods.